Tuesday, December 16

Picture This

7 comments:

hacksaw
said...

Interesting, but is this type of distribution really that unusual?

In baseball, average game attendance in 2008 was up 1% or more for 11 out of 30teams compared with '07. Roughly 3/4 of the increase came from only five teams. Overall average attendance was off -0.8%. Remarkably similar to the NBA situation conveyed here.

And is OKC really an outlier? One could argue that having a new city in the NBA is a normal part of doing business. Over the last 20 seasons, there have been seven expansion teams, plus at least three moves (depends on your definition), meaning on average, every other year at least one city gets a shiny new franchise.

Which is a long way of saying, nice graph - but I'm not sure what it means.

Fair points, but I think it's also fair to argue that the New Orleans and Oklahoma City situations are historically unusual.

1) The ownership willfully destroyed any chance at normal attendance in Seattle with their actions. They spent next to nothing on advertising, fielded a horrific on-court product, and did everything they could to alienate the fan base here. Rewarding them for posting better numbers in OKC would be like rewarding the guy who stole your t.v. for bringing it back to you.

2. New Orleans also faced a deadbeat owner, which is not unusual. However, they are also coming back from a hurricane-ravaged economic situation. Unless the NBA plans on scheduling hurricanes to devastate Memphis, Philly, and Sacramento in alternating seasons, I don't see how this is sustainable in the future.

I'm not trying to prove that the NBA is doing something wrong, per se. I'm trying to prove that despite their protests to the contrary, that the economic problems in the US are having a real impact on their league, that the city of Seattle shouldn't have to go hat in hand to the league and beg for a franchise, and that the league needs Seattle more than the other way around.

The point of the graph, though, is just to illustrate that two teams, both using historically unsustainable methods, are bringing up the league's numbers.

Not to get in the weeds, but I still respectfully disagree with your point that the increases for NO and OKC are "historically unusual".

Increases happen to a much larger extent (i.e. growth is entirely incremental) every time the NBA expands (on average once every three years over the last two decades).

Teams traditionally bottom out in attendance right before they move (see Charlotte pre-N.O.), so the OKC/SEA issue certainly has precedent as well.

Combine expansion and team movement with moves to new greater capacity arenas and/or LBJ-esque draft picks and/or Garnett/Allen-esque free agent signings, and it seems that it is a rarer year that does NOT see one or two outlier franchises with huge year-over-year attendance gains.

Enough already, this blog needs to be renamed "Now That the Sonics Are Gone, All We Have Left to Talk About is Declining NBA Attendance. A Lot." I know it's not as catchy as Supersonic Soul but it may work.